Sunday, August 31, 2014

Speaking of Hypocrites, Let' talk Democrats, . . . and Republicans!

By Bill Neinast



Choosing the right word is hard.  What describes one who says one thing but does the opposite?  The possible choices include hypocrite, charlatan, fraud, pretender, sham fake, and others.

For this discussion, hypocrite seems to be the right choice. Hypocrisy is defined as the claim or pretense of holding beliefs, feelings, standards, qualities, opinions, behaviors, virtues, motivations, or other characteristics that one does not in actual fact hold. It is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another.

Keep that definition in mind and handy, because there are many hypocrites in this country.  They spring up daily on the radio and TV and appear most frequently as politicians.

Actually, both parties seem to be run by hypocrites.

Take the Democrats for example. They delight in criticizing the “unfairness” of this country.  In their eyes, the country is not fair because the economic pie favors the rich.  They believe that profit making enterprises are evilly grown on the backs of the working poor and that the rich do not pay their “fair” share of taxes.  That is why Class Warriors or Social Democrats is a much better name for their organization.

What makes them hypocrites in this scenario is that some of the wealthiest men and women in the country lead the Democrats.  Consider the fact that in 2013 seven of the ten wealthiest members of Congress were Democrats.  Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the House, is number 15 on that list.

Then there are the poor Clinton and Kerry families.  Former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed they were dead broke when they left the White House 15 year ago.  Now they are multi-millionaires.  How could they be so heedless of their party’s claim to be “fair” in carving their piece of the wealth pie.

While Democrat Secretary of State John Kerry was still in the Senate, he was the third wealthiest man in the Congress.  To avoid paying his “fair” share of taxes, he registered one of his yachts in a state with a lower tax rate than his home in New York.

When those smug millionaires and billionaires surrender all of their assets except two lavishly furnished mansions, a private jet, and two Rolls Royces per family and subject their incomes, without deductions or waivers, to an income tax rate of about 75%, I might start crying with them about the unfairness of a free-market, capitalist society.

In this contest, however, the Oscar goes to the other side of the aisle.  Republicans put Democrats to shame in this contest to see who can be the most hypocritical.  

The days of the Grand Old Party, the GOP, that believed in smaller government and personal freedom are long gone.  Republicans still talk about those goals but practice just the opposite.

Personal freedom for them is limited to freedoms of their choice.  The first plank in their platform and the first item covered in every Republican candidate’s campaign literature is to curtail women’s freedom.  Without any regard to the circumstances of a woman’s pregnancy, Republicans scream “You do not have the freedom to make a choice to terminate the pregnancy for any reason.”  Individual rape, gang rape, date rape, incest, accidental failure of a contraceptive, evidence of a severely retarded fetus, and many other factors are not reasons to let a woman exercise her freedom of choice whether to abort.

They justify this irrational, unscientific argument as saving “innocent” unborn lives.  In the next breath, however, they demand more and quicker executions of adults found guilty of capital crimes.  The recurring news about innocent men and women having been executed and frequently freeing prisoners from death row when new evidence establishes their innocence has no effect on their fervor for taking adult “innocent” lives. 

Then they turn their penchant for curtailing others’ freedoms on those born with a different sexual orientation than theirs.  They cannot or will not accept the medical and scientific evidence of intersex individuals (formerly called hermaphrodites) and natural born homosexuals.  Their religious fervor demands that these citizens be denied the freedom to choose their sexual identity and to marry the loves of their lives.

Texas Republicans even go so far in ignoring scientific evidence that they officially adopted a plank in their state platform to support discredited “reparative therapy” to change the sexual orientation of adults from gay to straight and oppose teaching evolution in schools.

Currently, the biggest tar baby for Republicans is Sharia Law.  This abomination imposed in Muslim countries under the Koran should be avoided and abolished at all costs.  Imposing the Christian equivalent of Sharia Law, however, as in curtailing the freedom of women and homosexuals, no alcohol sales before noon on Sunday, the old Blue Laws, and other restrictions based on the Judaeo/Christian Bible are AOK.

When all this is considered, the current GOP would be less hypocritical if it renamed itself the Christian Socialist Party.

So here’s the perspective.

The world has always been, and always will be, filled with hypocrites.   The American political parties just seem to harbor more than their fair share.  

If the country starts practicing what the politicians discussed here preach, we are in for a world of hurt.

Let’s hope that common sense and justice prevail.

No comments:

Post a Comment